Valve has officially announced its own operating system, which they are calling SteamOS. This is actually one of three announcements that Valve will be making this week. The big headline about SteamOS is that it will be completely free to you the consumer!

SteamOS is a free, Linux-based standalone operating system that will run on “living room machines” according to Valve. Obviously being from Valve that SteamOS is geared towards gaming, but more in particular towards gaming on a TV in your living room.

Some of the main features of SteamOS include:

In-home streaming – you are able to play PC and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, this allows for users to use their SteamOS machine as a set-top box for streaming music, movies and TV from a variety of sources.

Family Sharing – This will allow you to swap games with family members (while saving your game content to the cloud).

Family Options – This will give users control over which titles other users may see

This announcement from Valve is only one of three. Could the next be for the long awaited “Steambox” hardware that the SteamOS would run on? We are unsure, but we will find out by the end of the week!